The last couple of days, I have been feeling pretty crappy. Mostly, it's the headaches. No matter what I take (Excedrin, Aleve, Ibuprofen) or what I do (Neti-pot, sit with ice pack, heating pad), nothing seems to get rid of it. I have no idea if it's an allergy thing or a sinus thing or a tension thing. /shrug. All I know is that it hurts.

This morning is actually better, but the headaches have been setting in around 3 or 4 and not letting go for the rest of the night. In fact, last night I took a benadryl and a tylenol pm to get to sleep, which of course means that I'm groggy this morning. And Wednesdays are my busy day. I'll be going tonight until 8:00, at which point Survivor's premiere is then on. Plus America's Next Top Model, but I think they are on at the same time this year. Anyway, thank God for internet playbacks.

Please, Lord, no headaches today. Only bliss and happiness and feel good-ness.

No matter how hard you work, there is always more that needs to get done. So much so that it can get overwhelming pretty fast. When I feel overwhelmed or I feel like there's so much to do that I will never be able to finish it or reach my goals, my first reaction is to freeze. I'm not saying it's logical, but it happens. Doing nothing at all is the worst thing I could do, and yet that's my typical reaction. Unless something forces me into action like a payment due or a meeting that I just can't miss, I have a hard time getting out of that paralysis and working hard toward my goals.

As a writer who sets my own schedule, this is a serious problem. I have set a very ambitious goal for myself during the month of September, and frankly, there's just no time for this bullshit. I want to write an entire 50,000 word novel that I can self-publish in ebook form. My goal is to finish it by the end of September, revise it over the first few weeks of October, and publish it before NaNoWriMo begins on November 1st.

For some reason, just knowing it was a huge, difficult goal, made me freeze up, unable to work as hard as I truly wanted to. In a way, I needed to trick myself into working harder. That's where my awesome husband comes in. He came up with this idea of making it into a kind of game. He's playing an MMO shooter called Global Agenda, which has little raids every hour or so that last between 15 and 30 minutes each. So, we decided that each time he went into a raid, I would work on my novel. We decided on a formula to compare his dps to my word count and now we race to see who can be the most productive in that time frame. Typically, this ends up meaning that I need to produce around 500 words in 15 minutes, which works out great for me.

Then, after the burst is over, I get an hour to watch TV or talk to friends on twitter or read a book or whatever. But when the raid starts again, it's go time. When we tried this method on Sunday, even though I was woefully hung over from the bachelor/bachelorette party the night before, I wrote 3700 words! Not too shabby!

We started talking about how I could extend that productivity into the daytime when G is at work. Last night at the Dollar Tree, G pointed out a digital kitchen timer. "Set this for 15 minutes," he said. "Then you can work at home when I'm not there." Aha! Great idea! We tried it last night even though he was here, and I still got six hundred words written before the timer went off. There's just something about knowing that I only have to focus on what I'm writing for a short 15 minutes that gets me quickly into this zone. There's no time to judge myself or my ideas. There's only time for writing. I think for rough draft writing, it's the best way I've ever found to add more productivity to my day in terms of writing. Now, I just need to set the timer for ten minute increments and get this damn house clean.

I haven't been updating much, I know. I'm sorry! I have been working on several big projects and thinking about starting a new blog that is less random and more specific. I have started a new novel I'm calling BEAUTIFUL DEMONS. I put PANDEMIC aside for now and am letting it sit before I go back to revise again. Things are good, just busy. I just wanted to write a quick post to say how much I enjoyed the newest Resident Evil movie. This is the 4th movie in the franchise, and it was definitely worth the $27 for G and I to go see it together. Most of the time, to be honest, I don't really find the 3D movies worth the extra money. Avatar was good, but some others just didn't utilize enough of the cool effects of 3D to make it worth the extra $3.50 a ticket. Resident Evil, however, delivered.

Right from the start, there was this awesome rain effect. On the streets of Tokyo, a girl in red high heels is just standing there in the rain amidst a bustling crowd of people, all of whom have umbrellas (of course). The rain effect was so cool in 3D, with some of the drops looking like they were right in front of my face. Later, there was also a scene where Alice was kicking zombie ass and as she shot a couple zombies in the head, the blood flew out into the crowd. It was awesome. The movie was action-packed to say the least, and Milla Jovovich is always so good at making Alice come to life for me.

If you're looking for something fun to watch and you enjoyed the other 3 Resident Evil Movies, then I highly recommend Afterlife. The 3D in and of itself is worth it. Our local theater just added an iMAX screen too, but we opted for the slightly cheaper regular theater. I'm thinking IMAX might actually be worth it on this one, so if you have the chance, upgrade. :) The ending definitely indicated a 5th movie on the way, and I can honestly say I'm looking forward to it.